Racial Diversity On Display At DNC

People of color speaking on the first night of the DNC nearly outnumbered those at the entire RNC.

People of color appear to be much more at home in the Democratic Party than the GOP. The Huffington Postcounted 11 of 24 speakers of color on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, including First Lady Michelle Obama, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.

In contrast, the news site counted a total of 12 speakers of color during the Republican National Convention’s entire four-day gathering. They comprised of seven African-Americans, four Latinos and one Asian-American.

There also a difference in tone and message. The First Lady brought the house down last night when she gracefully condemned the divisive racial rhetoric that’s coming from Donald Trump’s campaign. She also rebuked Trump’s message that America is no longer a great nation.

“This is the high call of patriotism,” Booker said. “Patriotism is love of country. But you can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen.We don’t always have to agree, but we must empower each other, we must find the common ground, we must build bridges across our differences to pursue the common good. We can’t devolve into a nation where our highest aspiration is that we just tolerate each other. We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love.”

The tone and message were different at the Republicans’ convention. As The New York Times noted, the handful of Black Republicans at the RNC received a moralizing lecture on race. The overwhelmingly White delegates “cheering wildly as two Black speakers ridiculed the Black Lives Matter movement and unconditionally praised law enforcement officers,” the newspaper reported.